He knows how to have fun but he usually does it at the expense of other people. Majority of the movie, Ferris manipulates Cameron into doing what he wants and until he realizes that he can't get out of it (car thing), he tries to back out of the situation. But I guess another argument could be is that Cameron and all of the people that ever listened to Ferris do what he says because they want to.
shareIt's a great funny movie! Stop with this dumb STUPID questions!
shareBoth. I mean, Ferris would definitely consider himself to be a good friend.
You want something corny? You got it!
With the way he treats Sloane, I'd go with good friend. But he could possibly be going down a slippery slope in the future, I suppose!
shareTony Stonem from Skins is a pretty good deconstruction of Ferris Bueller, Risky Business type characters. Cocky, intelligent young men for whom everything seems to go right. Tony definitely shows the dark side of that sort of person, and extremely belittling to Sid, his 'Cameron', whereas Ferris was merely slightly patronising.
shareHe loves his friend. Everything Ferris does is for Cameron's benefit. He wants to give his friend a good day because he knows Cameron is in a bad place.
It's pretty clear when Sloan says, "You knew what you were doing when you woke up this morning, didn't you?"
Or something along those lines.
It's an interesting question, because you can look at it from both angles and be correct.
Ferris certainly lies to people, deceives them, and manipulates everyone around him (even his own family) to do his bidding. He has the whole community, if not the whole city, dancing to his tune (sort of literally, too).
On the other hand, when you look at Cameron, the damaged soul - it's like a dog in 'Dog Whisperer', that's 'frozen'. If no one kicked him a bit, he would never move, and consequently, never evolve, and in the end, never live.
It's only thanks to Ferris that Cameron is moving. Without him, Cameron would be absolutely still, not progressing at all, and maybe regressing.
Think about it; compare a day without Ferris to what we are shown. Cameron would just lie there in his bed, maybe napping, and doing absolutely nothing, being a hypochondriac. There's nothing wrong with Cameron physically, and Ferris knows this. Cameron's 'illness' is his defence mechanism, his 'happy cave', his escape from reality, his retreat from life into victimhood, where he can falsely feel safe.
And thus become even more afraid.
Every day Cameron spends in his bed, he becomes more afraid to go out.
Only when there's an unstoppable, annoying force to snap him out of it and kick him out of bed, can he move forward and away from this self-created prison, and progress and evolve as a human being.
Thanks to Ferris, Cameron's brain is moving again, it's progressing. Instead of retreating deeper and deeper into his fears, he is facing the fears, he learns how to deal with life, things and his scary father. Maybe his father will be so startled by Cameron's sudden, uncharacteristic confidence that he forgets to be angry. Maybe that's what he was trying to do all the time, being so angry all the time, and being frustrated by his neurotic wife, whose safe mechanism is 'cleanliness'. Only when everything is absolutely, perfectly clean, can she feel like world makes sense.
I never liked Ferris, and I remember him as the guy who talked about giving his friend a good time and helping him out of a rut, yet should gets his friend into trouble and doesn't stick around to help him during a crisis.
He's like a Hollywood egomaniac's idea of a cool teen, someone who can get away with all the shit a not-nice person would like to get away with. Frankly, he reminds me of a junior American Psycho.
I typed too much again, so you can read the rest of this reply here:
https://justpaste.it/1cnt9
(I really wish they would make this discussion board 'unlimited' - what's the point of limiting TEXT? Sheesh.)